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Post Info TOPIC: Interesting 2013 Henman article on British junior development


Strong Club Player

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Interesting 2013 Henman article on British junior development


Here's an article i just found regarding Tim Henman's views on British junior development. I though it was worth sharing because part of it echoes what Naomi Cavaday was saying in her blog regarding transitioning. Plus it represents the most I've heard Henman elaborate on this topic. Apologies if you have all read it before.

 

2013

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis/the-last-word-why-british-tennis-needs-to-be-served-with-fish-and-chips-8640386.html

 

Tim Henman was speaking before Laura Robson lined up against Caroline Wozniacki on Monday afternoon. He did not need to wait for the result to begin the annual lament over the state of British tennis. Our second representative at the French Open, Heather Watson, lasted until Wednesday, courtesy of the rain delays. So that was that. Britannia well and truly ruled.

Granted this was clay, a surface that remains alien to the sport in this country, and our most accomplished player withdrew through injury, but how different will it be at Wimbledon, which begins in three weeks? Remove Andy Murray from the picture and we are left watching the old Brit-ometer counting out our players as they leave the show during the opening stanza.

Robson and Watson are not to blame for the failure of British tennis. It is a miracle they have made it as far as they have, given the competitive environment from which they emerged. The failure is systematic. The tennis structure in Britain does not produce champions. A £39m National Tennis Centre was introduced at Roehampton to address this issue, creaming off elite youngsters and, theoretically at least, hardening them into steely pros. Beneath that there is a series of financial incentives and support offered to clubs via the LTA to provide court time to kids and a string of national competitions to drive engagement.

The progress at junior level of Liam Broady, who penetrated the national consciousness reaching the junior Wimbledon final two years ago and Oliver Golding, who went one better with victory in the juniors at the US Open later that year, pricked our ears, but even this may be another false dawn. It is what happens next that matters, and where it all falls down. Our juniors, historically, have not trained on.

Last Monday this newspaper called for a golf-for-all tsar to take the game into neighbourhoods where the sport has little traction. The same might be argued for tennis. Henman points to an urgent need for the game to get among those children who engage in sport at eight, nine and 10, but are not exposed to tennis in sufficient numbers.

"The answer is you have to get the best athletes playing the game at a young age. You have to get the ones who are in the first XI football, first XV rugby and first XI cricket playing tennis. We dont do that. We lose the best athletes, the ones with the great hand-eye co-ordination, to other sports. The reality is we are getting the leftovers and in the vast majority of cases they are not good enough. It doesnt matter what facilities, what coaching you give them."

The stellar success of Broady and Golding at the junior Slams can be misleading, according to Henman. Are they playing against the best juniors? No, they are not because the best juniors are playing Futures tournaments and some of the Challenger events. We get too caught up in theses junior world rankings. They are meaningless. It is not about being the best junior at 14 and 15, it is about being the best pro. I wasnt very good at that age because I was too small but I had a very clear picture in my mind of how I was going to develop and where I wanted to be.

"There is too much emphasis on this thing called transition. There is no transition. On 31 December you are a junior. The next day on 1 January you are not. It is still the same game. And you have to have the game to progress. The reason why past juniors have not progressed is because their games have not been good enough."

Henman made it to the world top-five, he contested Grand Slam semis, including the French. They named a hill after him at Wimbledon, but he achieved despite the system not because of it. Murray took himself off to Spain to develop his game, an expression of the same motivation and drive to which Henman alludes, that which comes from within. It is this internal fire the sport needs to identify through the systematic plunder of other sports at an early age.

Tennis does not need another LTA suit to show the way, it needs a chief executive on the ground, leading a team of tennis officers into local education authorities, hammering the link between curriculum and the existing club structure. It needs to get kids playing against each other in school teams, driving each other forward through meaningful, visceral competition. Tennis can no longer be about cucumber sandwiches and Pimms, it needs to be served with fish and chips and a mug of tea.

Here's Henman again. We have good facilities and money to invest. We do those things, but how do Serbia produce all those players? They dont have a big tournament. Their country has been at war for years. The answer lies with the individual. The individual has to have that responsibility, desire and hunger. We have too many players pointing the finger at the LTA. We didnt get this, we didnt get that. It is not about that. It is about how badly do you want it.

 *I dont want that final bit in quotes but i dont know how to get rid of that effect.



-- Edited by skibbarriz on Tuesday 6th of October 2015 12:13:16 AM



-- Edited by skibbarriz on Tuesday 6th of October 2015 12:20:06 AM

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As has been said by others on this board, while the general prescriptions seem reasonable, there are things about specific people in this article that feel less fair.

When Mr Broady and Mr Golding were at the top level of junior slams, they were playing the best players of their age: at that point (unlike when Mr Henman came on the scene or, for that matter, now) there were very few juniors playing the senior game. Golding beat Bjorn Fratangelo and Jiri Vesely at the US Open, among others: Thiem, Peliwo, Sean Berman, Luke Saville, Novikov, Pavlasek, et al were also in the draw (indeed Kyle Edmund beat de Loore, Krueger and Peliwo in the first three rounds - something of an indicator in itself!) Liam Broady at Wimbledon 2011 beat Kyrgios in the 1st round, Mathias Bourgue in the 2nd, Vesely in the 3rd, Robin Kern in the QFs, and Jason Kubler in the SFs.

I also think that it would be very hard indeed to argue that Mr Broady is lacking in "responsibility, desire and hunger."

That said, as noted above, many of the general points around developing a good game, getting more people playing, moving beyond a small socioeconomic group, etc, are things with which many people have frequently expressed their agreement.

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Spectator as you say something discussed at length, researching and designing interventions that may alter the dynamic could potentially delivery a library full of PhD thesis. Picking out players who are good juniors but don't progress is also harsh as n= 20 at the most, how many premiership players would one anticipate the best youth schemes to deliver over a 3-4 year cycle (and that's not top 150 in the world).

Choosing Arsenal at random, they have development centres that children trial to get into in many counties, they take 4 squads of 10-12 theses are whittled down to elite squads of 8-10 (>90% attrition rate) they play each other through the summer again the kids are trialed again annually. These elite squads which have some magnificent young players in are just one of the many ways they may recruit a child for an academy trial. Those in the academy again are trialed annually and indeed arsenal will actively go out and recruit the best boys from other academy's across Europe as despite the best training the outcome and premiership player yield is so variable.

The infrastructure of the boys sports hierarchy is so ingrained, ie. Masses of parents are committed to seek out opportunities for their boys to play footie at 6-7, a significant number will coach it, it crosses socioeconomic divides parents catch two buses to get to games and then use their benefits cheques to pay their kids subs on a Sunday morning. Single handedly the market to watch football has grown and now sustains satellite television. Football is a major pillar for most of what being British is all about and that's fine.

I disagree with Tim in that I don't think tennis should fight it generically, tennis has to work round the status quo re male sport but he makes a very strong point in that it should definitely work with schools to deliver the primary schools summer PE curriculum but facilitate extension beyond that by links to tennis camps held by clubs but where possible in the schools. There is a massive psychological battle in getting a child even a keen one from a school to a club as most of that is dependent on parents, unlike football tennis is unlikely to be entrenched in their DNA.


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I accept the basic principle that we loose a lot of elite male athletes to more fiscally rewarding sports, where I struggle to square this off as this is not the case in the ladies game where tennis and golf are the only fiscally rewarding sports although football is growing.

Virtually all the excuses related to access to the best raw material to develop male tennis players are absent when you consider development of the ladies game.

There is a whole cohort of athletic girls not doing sport! A different battle, but perhaps one that it is possible to win given our resources.


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I think Henman's remarks are stupid and betray his ignorance of the barriers that exist in tennis. Some children will readily take to a club, others, mainly from a different demographic, won't. A child of ten or twelve doesn't have to 'badly want' something either.

Rather than talk about it, Henman ought to pull his finger out and make it happen himself. In Brixton preferably.


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Eddie, there is a fantastic tennis club in Burgess Park (Southwark) which is getting kids in Southwark (which houses some of the UKs most deprived wards) playing tennis and competing in events around London. It's in the park with decent facilities friendly cafe and a pretty vibrant unassuming environment. Disappointingly I don't think it got all the facilities it deserves, I have posted previously bemoaning the lack of a roof, retractable would have been nice as opposed to retracted by the counsel due to spending cuts.

Any kid in Brixton would need to catch one bus a 45 would probably do it and in good traffic be at the courts in 10-15 minutes (which would be free).

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I only mentioned Brixton as I did some children's coaching there once (well, Brockwell Park actually which is enveloped on two sides by the borough), many moons ago for a local charity. Tons of enthusiasm, from mainly West Indian children, good turnout and so on plus they stuck at it but inevitably initiatives like this, however laudable, go nowhere unless there's some official endorsement and beef going into it over the course of time, well beyond the power and capabilities of a part-time coach. There were one or two potentially very good athletes among the children but you were never in a million years going to get children like that joining tennis clubs which are culturally weird places for them and their families. These are the places which need the facilities you mention. Why can't these parks get a bubble up for three or four months a year?

Battersea Park, nearby, was another thriving tennis location which for years had a great buzz to it during the 70s and 80s. That could have operated as a local tennis hub in itself for the more gifted and dedicated or those that wanted to progress. Even Arthur Ashe turned up once to knock up - before going on to Wimbledon! And the coaches weren't all white either: the demographic there went right across the board. The coaches actually made a pitch to the LTA at one point to try and get the local authority pressured to have the place organised more seriously as a tennis hub but that all fell on deaf ears.



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Eddy, I do see signs of hope but generally they evolve around initially one uber committed local individual around whom a team developes and incrementally drive things forward. The go active group who run the Southwark tennis club appear to have evolved around a local coach but built a group with a very diverse skillset who have worked with the LTA and local counsel to deliver the project (without a roof) and have all got substantial recognition for their work in grass roots tennis.

The future I see is in growing this group and transitioning their understanding of how they have achieved what they have achieved and finding parks that attract a diverse group of people.

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Sadly perhaps, that reliance on the odd pioneer or enthusiast - rather than a system - does still appear to be the case. There was an age, early on, when parks tennis, (along with private member clubs) played a very significant part in popularising the sport. Parks tennis helped to drive the sport from its upper class beginnings into a much more widely popular sport. I had a quick look at a book on the social history of tennis and at one time it seems there was even a separate parks lta independent of Wimbledon/the LTA which were mainly concerned with private clubs.

It seems to me that there is such a natural fit between tennis and public parks that tennis in parks could credibly form a plank of national planning policy directed at local authorities. Parks also have great scope for encouraging youngsters to take the game up, offering a different environment to member clubs where, despite LTA Club Vision policy etc, children have historically not always been welcome. Whether the LTA is the right body to lead the effort remains open to question.


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Hurrah for Parks Tennis! It is still happening, partially with support from the LTA, cf www.tennisforfree.com/, parkstennis.co.uk/, www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/greenwich-park/things-to-see-and-do/sports-and-leisure/the-greenwich-park-tennis-centre, www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content/leisure-and-libraries/parks-and-green-spaces/tennis,

And yes, I am in wholehearted agreement. It's how I started playing tennis - with parents who hadn't the least interest, a club wasn't an option. But my friend and I could just wander down to the park and play without any fuss or bother (or - as still seems to be true in some of the above schemes - fees). True, we were both rotten athletes, so the benefit to the player development system was nil. But we were active (health benefits!) and developed a love of the game, which at least helps to build a supporter base for those who are decent athletes.

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The Will To Win Group (the London parks based organisation which a poster recently said was funding Tara M) certainly do charge fees.  There is no membership payment require unless you want to be able to book courts in advance.  They do offer free walk-on for school kids early evening during term times but there's usually only a few courts available as this is when they do their junior coaching.  That said, their coaching for juniors is inexpensive for London, inclusive and welcoming. 



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Beyond that, Optimist, what's required are coaches, indeed any observer, who can recognise talent when they see it and then encourage the child into a programe where tennis development is taken a little more seriously. It's the ability to spot talent at school level and then getting the child into an organised programme. It entails working with parents too. Not everyone has the knack for it.

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Not really relevant here but, just looking at the new composition of the ITF Committees for the next couple of years, do you think it says something that GB doesn't have a representative on the 14-strong Junior Committee?

www.itftennis.com/news/220476.aspx


NB Is Martin Corrie the father of Ed ? (And Tom?)



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yes - full board and details

www3.lta.org.uk/Footer/about-us/Structure-and-Vision/

Martin is set to take over from Cathy Sabin as LTA president

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and for all the other committees

www3.lta.org.uk/NewWebsite/LTA/Documents/About%20Us/LTA%20Policies%20and%20Rules/Boards,%20Committees%20and%20Advisory%20Groups%202015.pdf

PS - I'm not sure if that link worked, but it's linked on the page to the link above



-- Edited by paulisi on Monday 7th of December 2015 04:29:40 PM

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